One crucial element to my new Linux install was to get my dual monitors working. I have a NVidia 8500 card, and early testing with Kubuntu off the live CD were not promising.

NVidia does have a “restricted” (that is, not open source) driver that you can automatically install. However, my second monitor would not go beyond 640×480! There were a few other issues as well.

To cut to the solution, the installer misread my monitor’s info and guessed wrong at the sync frequencies the monitor could handle. I wound up having to manually change the sync frequencies in /etc/X11/xorg.conf to match my monitor’s range:

Section “Monitor”

HorizSync       31.0 – 80.0
VertRefresh     43.0 – 72.0

Of course, you need to be root to change that file.

Also under Screen, I set:

Option         “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “True”

and

Option         “Coolbits” “1″

The first option seemed to speed up my display quite a bit. The Coolbits setting lets the nvidia-settings program change the clock speed of the card which can significantly speed it up.

Two notes: First, if you want the nvidia-settings program to save data, you must run it as root (I use sudo although you should probably use gksudo or kdesudo. The other issue is that even as root, the utility does not save clock speed ups (since they could crash your machine). So when you know you want to save the clock speeds, you’ll have to arrange for the settings program to run on startup. I have mine in my session start, for example:

/usr/bin/nvidia-settings -a GPUOverclockingState=1 -a GPU2DClockFreqs=544,581 -a GPU3DClockFreqs=544,581

Assuming, of course, you want to set the core to 544MHz and the memory clock to 581MHz.

Update: Also, some settings get stored under your home directory and won’t reload without a -l in the above command line. Gamma settings, for one.